The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others (2014) by Indian-English author Neel Mukherjee follows the eventual downfall of an upper-middle class family in late 1960s and early 1970s India. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and established Mukherjee’s international literary reputation. The Lives of Others was praised for its detailed and compassionate look into complex characters, as well as its portrayal of domestic life complicated by politics. Its themes include betrayal, privilege, systematic social injustice, and the paranoia brought on by the threat of social judgment. The novel is presented non-chronologically. It mixes first person accounts from the younger generation, who are focused on social justice, as well as the older generation’s involvement with alcoholism, money, prayer, incest, and rape.

The prologue is set in May 1966. It is told in third person from the vantage point of Nitai Das, a struggling farmer in rural India. Unsuccessful in gathering food or negotiating his debts, he returns home, to where his wife and children are all starving. Because there is no hope for food or to repay their debts, he puts his family out of their misery by killing each one, before killing himself.

Chapter one begins with Purnima Ghosh, wife of Priyo Ghosh, waking up in a very wealthy house. She would be happier if she lived on the top floor, but it’s currently occupied by Adinath, who is Priyo's oldest brother and his parents' obvious favorite. Priyo, meanwhile, is apathetic toward the family’s fortune and frequents a brothel, where he asks prostitutes to perform unusual acts on him. The Ghosh family lives in Calcutta, India. Each of the five adult children have their own floor in the house. They each have private ambitions for themselves and for their own children, and the fight over resources only increases as the family’s stationary and paper mill businesses decreases in prosperity.



Prafullanath, the patriarch of the family, spends most of his time on the top floor, waiting to die. He used to be an adventurous man that displayed great ingenuity (and cruel cunning) by erecting an enterprising paper business after his older brother shut him out of a prosperous diamond business. But now, his health is fading and several investments of his have turned sour. Charubala, his wife, is rarely happy as the family’s fortune heads downhill. She likes to take out her rancor on various family members, especially her daughter-in-laws.

The youngest son, the adulated Somnath, died, and his widow, Purba, and her two children—Sona and Kalyani—live in the smallest room in the entire house. Purba is a kind woman, but indignant at her station; she lives on the same floor as servants. Fortunately, her son, Sona, ends up being a math prodigy, and is able to move his immediate family out of India. On the second and third floors of the house live three sons along with their wives and respective children. The family also has a daughter, Chhaya, who has never married because her odd-looking eyes and particularly dark skin are deemed to be unattractive; she is angry with her situation and insults everyone who has less power than her. The third oldest brother, Bholanath, a conniving manager at the family’s company, joins her in this middle realm. Meanwhile, the family is having issues with union workers who are demanding higher wages.

Though Adinath is the favorite child, his own eldest son, 21-year-old Supratnik, is a bit of a rebel. One day he joins a Maoist-Communist rebellion in the Medinipur district of West Bengal. This was called the Naxalite movement and began in 1967; it was led by the Communist Part of India (CPI). Supratnik witnesses the grave injustices that his family indirectly supports. Most of his tales appear in the novel in the form of his diary entries. Whether Supratnik is writing to a lover, mentor, or family member is not clear until well into the novel. It turns out that Supratnik is writing to his aunt Purba, whom he loves. While Supratnik’s family tries to beat back unionizing forces in Calcutta to maintain the family’s estate, Supratnik is using his education to help farmers in poorer regions of India to organize and demand for greater civil rights. Supratnik especially focuses on the adivasis in south India, an indigenous population who have been historically oppressed. It’s while working with the CPI that Supratnik learns about the murder-suicide of Nitai Das, which was described in the prologue.



Supratnik’s unsent letters are interspersed with third person accounts of political and artistic changes that occurred in Calcutta from various historical periods, including pre-independence from Britain in 1910; famine after WWII, and the acceptance of Western influences like The Grateful Dead, Karl Marx, and narcotics. After Supratnik joins the CPI, his mother, Sandhya, becomes violently ill. On her death bed, Madan, a lifelong servant of the Ghosh’s, confirms for Supratnik that his leaving precipitated her illness. Momentarily forgetting his principles, Supratnik berates Madan. Toward the end of the novel, Supratnik is arrested for murdering several business managers, landlords, and moneylenders. The authorities impose various tortures on his mind and body, including branding him with a communist icon on his inner thigh, which they have already cut hundreds of times.

The novel closes with two epilogues. One is set in 2012. Communist rebels are about to remove tracks of an approaching train, a terrorism technique they learned from Supratnik, who they refer to as a “Naxalite martyr.” The other epilogue is a newspaper clipping from 1986. It reads that Sona has become a professor of pure mathematics at Stanford University. The novel thus concludes by offering two visions of the family’s fate: one where the pure life of Purba is valued and where peace is attained, and another where the greed of patriarch Prafullanath is obeyed, which tends to end in violence and disappointment.